“Wind’s with us. Be there soon,” Johnny said cheeringly.
“Wa-roo!” answered the dog. Standing high in the prow, he appeared to direct their course.
They were still half a boat length from shore when with a mighty leap the dog, clearing the boat, landed on the ice that edged the water and at once shot away into the forest.
“Tico! Tico!” the girl cried. “Come back! Come back!”
Wind and water drowned her cries. The dog did not return.
“All we can do is to follow him,” said Johnny as he made the boat fast to a bough that hung far out over ice and water, then tested the ice with an axe.
“Here, let me have those,” he said as Gordon Duncan was about to throw his bundle of bows and arrows ashore.
“Guess you better carry them,” said Gordon Duncan. “Can’t be too careful of your artillery in such a land.”
After a dangerous slide or two they were on land.
Following the dog’s steps in the snow, Johnny led the way into the tangled brush. To his great joy he found indications of a rough trail.
“May have been made by moose or caribou, for all that,” he told himself.
“What was that?” the girl exclaimed suddenly, stopping short.
From behind them had come a cracking sound.
Dropping the bundle of arrows he carried, Johnny sprang back over the trail.
“It’s gone!” There was a touch of despair in his voice as he called to his companions. “The boat’s gone! The branch tore away.”
Never in his life had he felt more miserable. No food, no blankets, no shelter in a strange land, hundreds of miles from known human habitation, with a blizzard tearing at them.
“And it’s all my fault,” he said. “It was I who tied the boat. I should have tested the moorings.”
“No,” said Gordon Duncan. There was force and dignity in his tone. “It is not entirely your fault. We were there to offer counsel. And this is not the end. It is but the beginning. We have bows and arrows. There is game here as elsewhere. There is always a way to prepare a shelter and make a fire.”
“But first we must find Tico,” said the girl, who had just come up to them. “I can’t imagine what madness has seized him.”
“Dogs,” said Gordon Duncan, “are sometimes wiser than humans. There may be something in his actions that is worth investigating. Let us be going.”